Ye wei = a recent Chinese fad where exotic items are consumed with no regard for their rare, precious quality or the detrimental effect on the environment.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Dead Destinations

I'm no Deadhead myself- the one time I saw them with Jerry was on the Dylan tour in July '87 at Giants Stadium and it was easily one of the worst concerts I've ever witnessed. But I did see them w/o Mr. Garcia at Madison Square Garden in April 2009 and it was not only a huge improvement but also almost as transcendent as a 'Head would have hoped for.

So as a semi-fan/semi-agnostic, I was at least curious when I started reading David Fricke's Rolling Stone piece detailing his favorite Grateful Dead shows. For some of the shows he details, I already knew about it, heard and enjoyed them on official releases or read about as 'legendary' shows, so I was at least curious. The problem was that there weren't many links in the online version and only one embedded Soundcloud stream of one of the shows to hear the 20 concerts he detailed. Music obsessive that I am, I wanted to track down as much as I could hear myself and thanks to the amazing archive that the band and its management has set up at the Internet Archives site, much of it is sitting out there, ready for you to hear it for free. Most of the rest are also available to hear on Spotify too.

So for you 'Heads and general Dead curiosity seekers, I'd like to share all of the links that I found to the shows that Fricke details in his article. I've just got started myself but I'm already loving it and can't wait to continue listening in the coming days and weeks and months... Some of the ones I've heard as faves are in bold below too.